Chevrolet Malibu Electrical/Lighting

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Brake lights are not powered by the switch directly as in previous cars but driven by the BCM (body control module), there is a switch there though to let the BCM know when to actifiy the brake lights and if it's defective will cause problems, You should buy/borrow an inexpensive multimeter to help diagnose this issue..

I have a 2008 Chevrolet malibu with 160,000 miles. This car has been very good to me over the last 4 1/2 years but recently I have started having some issues with warning lights. It happens most often as soon as I fill my tank. My gas gauge shows no fuel and it tells me on the radio that I have low fuel. It also tells me that I need to service my tire monitor and service my air bags. These gauges/warning lights will randomly come on and off each time I re start my car. It seems though that when I get at or below a half a tank of gas, the warning lights come on less often. There has also been a few times that my ABS warning light has come on and also my daytime running lights have gone off and I had to manually turn them on. I took it to the dealership to have them look at it and their response was that I needed to replace the left and right front impact sensors and the sensor in my fuel tank. I do not understand how these sensors could be the problem with random and intermittent warning lights coming on. It sounds to me like it is a wiring problem. Can someone please help! I am a single parent and I cant afford to randomly replace things on my vehicle in hopes that it corrects the problem. Thank you for your time!!

My wife's 2010 Malibu recently had an issue where the Traction control warning light and Engine operating at reduced power light came on 1 morning when she started the car up. It had rained heavily the day before and she has a sunroof on the car. Dealer said that one of the drains for the sunroof was clogged and was shorting out a wiring harness. He said the sunroof drain runs down each A-post and at some point within the A-post, the drain was clogged. The wiring harness was within this A-post. He cleaned out the drain lines, dried everything out and it seemed to solve the problem. I asked if there was anything I could do to prevent these drain lines from clogging in the future and he said no.

Don't know if your car has a sunroof or not or even if this solution could apply to your case but just thought I would list it here.